


Is It Not Queer That He Is Thus Bewitched?

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: Terra Incognita [2]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Drunk Sex, Infidelity, M/M, Piles of infidelity, So much infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 22:49:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5603866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What they don't know won't hurt you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Is It Not Queer That He Is Thus Bewitched?

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to another story of mine, "Latigo", taking place a couple of months later.  
> The title comes from Christopher Marlowe's Edward II.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

“Tell me a secret.”  
“You, first.”  
Glumly: “You know all of mine.”

He's telling lies all over the place. They seem so flimsy, but that's the thing about lies: they always require more than one party to prop them up. So, Jim can be a bad liar, can spin out the same excuse to cover weeks, and Leslie just-  
She believes.  
Of course, he kept his apartment. The last thing he wants to do is drag himself home at an ungodly hour after work, and without even meaning to, make a noise and wake up Lesley, or the baby, or both.  
“You're so thoughtful,” Leslie says, and kisses his cheek, “How'd you get to be that way?”  
“Good up-bringing, I suppose.”  
He is so considerate. He never comes home late, because he just doesn't come home. He doesn't endanger the baby's health, with the nameless and ill-defined malaise he's been nursing for a month, because he's put himself into self-imposed quarantine, in his apartment, across town.  
“Have you been to a doctor?” Leslie asks, not for the first time.  
The answer Jim gives her is just as well-used: “The only appointment I could get is for a month from now. I'm just trying to take it easy, stay away from you and James-” this would be his infant son- “so that if it is something serious, it can't hurt you.” Cough, cough. For effect.  
“I just hate that you have to stay away from him. He needs his father.” There's a plea in her voice, nearly smothered- buried alive- but left just enough air to survive.  
“I know. And I want to be there for him. And for you. If something happened, though, I could never forgive myself.”  
“I love you,” Leslie says, obviously moved, though the full effect is missed over the phone.  
“I love you,” Jim echoes, and hangs up.

“I can smell him on you, you know.”  
“Nothing gets past you.”

Harvey's not so easily placated. With words, anyway. All Harvey understands is attention. But a little goes a long way.  
“So, no one at home suspects that it's me you're playing doctor with? Not the good doctor, herself?”  
Jim needs another drink before he can answer that question. “If she does, she's keeping it to herself.”  
“She doesn't suspect,” Harvey says, suddenly edgy, jabbing a finger into the air, “because this is so weird and fucked-up that nobody normal could imagine it. Most guys, they have the incredible luck to get someone like Thompkins to even look at them, let alone have their kid, they get down on their knees and thank God. She's smart, beautiful-” ticking off points on his fingers, “tolerates your bullshit, tolerates my bullshit-”  
Jim raises his eyebrows. “Is there something I should know, Harvey? Have you had it with me? Do you want to move on to my wife, now?”  
“Shut the fuck up. But here you are, with me. Explain that, Detective Gordon, solve that fucking crime. Fuck. I dropped the fucking bottle opener.” Harvey gets down on the floor and begins scraping around under the coffee table. “I don't get it,” he huffs, coming up, “It's like passing on caviar, and licking a toilet bowl.”  
“Maybe I don't like caviar.”  
“Yeah, but no one likes the taste of shit. Seriously, Jim- what the fuck are you doing here?”  
Harvey only talks when he's not being occupied in other ways. “I'll show you what I'm doing here,” Jim says, his voice rough; throat, sore. Then, he's on his knees in front of Harvey, who now has nothing to say, at all.  
This is how it's good. Leslie talks. The things she says are important, they're good things, they're for Jim's benefit, but it's exhausting to be so loved and cared for. If lying takes two people, so does love. You have to be complicit in your own adoration. It doesn't just wash over you as you passively savor it. You have to be worthy of it. You have to constantly make yourself more worthy.  
Harvey doesn't adore him, though. Harvey fucks him. Fucks his mouth with his cock. Fucks his ass with his fingers. Holds him down, and kisses his mouth, bites his neck. Leaves him bruised and aching, and full of an uncomplicated calm that nothing else can give. They fuck, and they drink, and it's good. It's stupid, and it's good, and it's all Jim wants.  
Until it isn't.  
“Leslie's going to call. I need to be home tonight.”  
“She called you two days ago.”  
“Yeah, well, she's my wife. She likes to talk to me. Go figure.”  
Harvey narrows his eyes. “And why aren't you living with her, again?”  
Like Leslie, Harvey needs to be told, again and again. It's like having two wives. “The baby needs to sleep through the night, and he can't do that if I'm coming home late, or getting calls at all hours of the night. Also, I'm still fighting this cold, or flu, or whatever it is, and his immune system isn't fully functional yet.”  
“You look fine.”  
“The doctor told me that I could be carrying something that just makes me a little sick, but could really hurt the baby.”  
“What doctor? I thought you couldn't get an appointment for a month.”  
“It's someone Leslie knows. I didn't have an appointment; I just talked to her on the phone, and she told me that until I could get checked out, that I should err on the side of caution.”  
Harvey shakes his head. “Your life is too strange.”  
“Tell me about it.”  
Of course, Leslie's not calling him that night. She's been told that he needs to go to sleep early. Unencumbered, now, he goes home. There, he waits.  
“I brought wine,” Oswald says, holding up the bottle as Jim lets him in.  
“I don't drink wine.”  
“I didn't say it was for you.”  
“You want to have a drink with me?”  
“Sure,” Oswald says, setting the bottle down, and opening drawers in the kitchen, looking for a corkscrew, “You could tell me about your day. I could tell you about mine. Maybe we could watch a movie together.”  
“You're kidding.”  
Oswald looks up, fixes Jim with his gaze. “No. Why would I joke about that? What's funny, Jim? That I want to spend time with you with my clothes on?”  
Three wives. Jim has three wives, now.  
“No,” Jim answers halfheartedly.  
Then, Oswald grins. “It's such fun to scare you. If I want to watch movies with someone, I can do that with Gabe.”  
Who the hell is Gabe?  
“I just want to loosen up a little,” Oswald continues, then holds up the corkscrew, “There it is. Can you open this? I'm too tired.”  
Sighing, Jim opens the bottle, and pours Oswald a glass of wine, and himself one of whiskey.  
“That's better,” Oswald says, when he finishes his drink, lifting himself up to perch on the edge of the kitchen counter, “I don't want a marriage, Jim; just the honeymoon.”  
I'll give you a honeymoon, Jim thinks, then actually says it, his throat and his tongue and his head now mercifully unconstricted.  
If Leslie's his wife, and Harvey's an uncomplicated fuck, Oswald's-  
After a year of knowing him, and the months of whatever this is with him, Jim still doesn't know what the fuck Oswald is.

“Don't you want to know when I figured it out?”  
“That would imply that I tried hiding it from you.”  
“Didn't you?”  
“No. I didn't.”

What Oswald is is strangely accepting. He doesn't seem bothered by Leslie. If he knows about Harvey-  
If he knows? Oswald, of course, knows everything. Jim knows better than to try to hide things from him. It's an insult to them, both. Oswald doesn't care about Harvey. It's liberating, but it's... discomfitting, somehow. This isn't the way it's supposed to be. People are supposed to be jealous. It's how you know that they care about something.  
“I can't see you tomorrow,” Jim says. A perfect, irritating non sequitur as he's slipping down Oswald's suspenders.  
“Well, I didn't think I had you all to myself.”  
“You don't.”  
“I know, Jim. But it doesn't take much to make me happy. You know that.”  
He does. If Leslie needs words, and Harvey wants attention, then Oswald dwells comfortably enough in silence and isolation. He wants Jim, but seems to make do with the wanting. He'll wait and want forever, Jim knows- as long as 'forever' is only temporary.  
And Jim- can't do this any other way. He tried to let go of Oswald, but he couldn't. As much as Oswald needs him, for some God-forsaken reason, he needs Oswald. If he could only figure out why, maybe he could move on, un-stick himself from this point, where he's speared, as though shot through by an arrow. He can't move.  
Initially, he'll think that he can take it or leave it. What is Oswald? He's too short, and he's too skinny, and he's too pale. He's hardly there, at all. He's a murderer, and who knows what else? He collapses on himself if you look at him the wrong way. Frown at him, and he heaves like a house in a gale. Get rough with him, and he dissolves into tremors. Kiss him, and he melts.  
Touch him, and he sticks to you. Suddenly, your hands are no longer your own. They belong to him. You can't stop touching him.  
Jim can't stop touching him. Oswald's nude, now, and Jim's getting there, himself. All he wanted was to understand why he can never truly pull away. He thought that if he indulged himself, fully, it would necessarily be the end. Get too close, and you won't like what you see. That was the starting point, though: he never liked Oswald. Pitied him, tolerated him. But never liked him. How did Jim start to need him?  
It's not a mystery he's going to solve tonight. Or, probably, any other night. But he has to keep trying. Going in deep, plumbing the depths. Searching for revelation.  
Though, the only revelation he ever seems to find is in orgasm. In that pale sliver of merciful oblivion that neither Leslie's unshakable love nor Harvey's buffeting his senses can bring. He only ever seems to find it in Oswald's arms. And once he gets a peek at it, he has to come back, hoping for a better look.

“Why not?”  
“Why didn't I try to hide it from you?”  
“Yes.”  
“Because I didn't care whether or not you knew.”  
A smile. “How wicked of you.”  
A shrug. “Maybe. I wasn't looking at it that way.”  
“So, what does this mean? For us?”  
“Absolutely nothing.”  
“You still want me?”  
Another smile. “Of course I do.”  
“But not more than-”  
A frown. “Don't be like that. Kiss me.”

“Kiss me,” Oswald gasps.  
Jim's past the point where pride objects. Pride's useless. It just gets in the way of doing what you want to do.  
He kisses Oswald's mouth. His throat. The shoulder with the new scar, still deep pink and raw. This gets him a ticklish, stuttered moan. A rough brush of his fingers against it, and Oswald gasps again, his head falling back. A pulse of pressure at his knee, and Oswald cries out, shakes in Jim's arms. Jim kisses his mouth while it's still open, letting out little exhalations of pain. Oswald's rubbing up against him, loose and desperate with the insult to his nerves, seeking relief.  
“What do you want?” Jim asks. If he's asked to do it, it's not like he decided on his own.  
“Kiss me,” Oswald demands again, digging his nails into Jim's back, pulling him in.  
And Jim's always waiting to be pulled under. Until he's in so deep he can't find his way out.

Gentle hands, and a romantic pose. Soft lips pressed to the ear. “Is this how he does it?”  
“No. He's not like this, at all.”  
“What's he like?”  
“Why do you want to know? Are you jealous, or have you wondered what it would be like with him?”  
“Then answer this: Why me? If you like it so much with him.”  
“Maybe you're not the only one who gets jealous.”

He has his head between Oswald's legs, holding them apart; mouth on the soft curve of his thigh. Oswald can't see his face. No one can see him. No one can read his expression. No one knows.

“You assume that he'll find out.”  
“I know he will,” Oswald says, smiling to himself, so deep in his satisfaction that it takes him by surprise when Edward spins him around.  
“How do you know?”  
“I'm still waiting for you to kiss me.”  
Looking vexed, Edward acquiesces. For a man who thinks of himself as brutal and guileful, he's neither, in this. His touch is soft, and the second he touches Oswald, he shows his hand. It hurts being somebody's second choice. For Jim, they're all nothing but second choices- Oswald; Leslie; Bullock. Though, what Jim loves the most is anybody's guess. Oswald doubts that even Jim knows. So, he's willing to force Jim to a decision. To remove himself by degrees, until Jim realizes- too late!- what it is to need somebody, only to find that they've slipped from your grasp, and are now beyond your reach.


End file.
